Introduction

Libraries around the world have experienced a sudden cut
in budget over the years. However, costs of journals subscription have
continued to rise without corresponding increases in libraries budgets.
Each year, Nigerian libraries can only afford to subscribe to a very
few low cost journals.

In short, Oren (2008) noted that the current system of
scholarly publishing is unsustainable, as no library could be able to
keep up with the annual price increases. However, Oren (2008) stated
that the seeming out of control system of journals costs, has laid the
foundation for the open access movement.

The publication of scientific journals began 1665 to
enable researchers share their work quickly and widely and to establish
priority of researchers investigating the same problems (Albert,
2006).says, journals published then could not pay the authors, hence,
the tradition of writing for impacts rather than payment was in vogue
and prevailed. But with the passage of time, "serial crisis" rooted in
subscription price became barrier to information access and a serious
concern to the stakeholders of scholarship. This was the remote cause
of looking for an alternative model which turned out to be Open Access.

The primary advantage of open access journals is that
the entire content is available to users everywhere regardless of
affiliation with a subscribing library. The main motivation for most
authors to publish in an open access journals is increased visibility
and ultimately a citation advantage (Suber, 2006). Researcher citations
of articles in a hybrid open access journals has shown that open access
journals articles are cited more frequently or than non open access
articles (Antelman, 2004).

Literature Review

Open access journals are scholarly journals that are
available online to the readers without financial, legal, or technical
barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the
internet itself. (Suber, 2006) Some are subsidized, and some require
payment on behalf of the author. Subsidized journals are financed by an
academic institution or a government information center, while those
requiring payment are typically financed by money made available to
researchers for the purpose from a public or private funding agency, as
part of a research grant. (Suber, 2006).

Many studies have been carried out on awareness and use
of open access journals. Bartle and Walton, (1996) argue that most
researchers are still reluctant to the use of Open Access Journals; one
of the major reasons for this is that they are not aware of what is
available to them and what the services is capable of doing. In a
similar fashion, the results of the user survey, at the University of
Hong Kong library (Woo, 2005; cited by Korobili, Tilikidou &
Delistarou 2005) shows that 68.8 percent of the respondents prefer to
use open access journals compared to 31.2 percent who prefer to use
printed journals. In Nigeria, studies such as those of Ureighe, Oroke
and Ekruyota (2006) and Ajuwa (2003) found that access to and use open
access resources is still low, the factors that may be accountable for
the low use may be awareness and attitude of researchers.

Applebee, and Clayton, (1996) also found that ease,
convenience, and accessibility were major factors influencing academic
OAJ use.

Okoye, & Ejikeme, (2010) indicated that with
open access, articles can be accessed online free of charge. He
identified inadequate skills to navigate the internet, unstable power
supply, unavailability of internet facilities, permanence of open
access movement due to unstable financial support, lack of knowledge of
the existence of open access journals in the internet as constraints to
the use of open access journals by researchers.

Methodology

The study employed the descriptive research method using
expost-factor type of design. The entire population for the study was
one hundred and forty four (144) masters degree student of the
Department of Library, Archival and Information Science, University of
Ibadan. Nigeria. T he masters degree students are divided into MLS I
and MLS II (MLS I represent masters degree students who are still
involved in course work, while MLS II are those that done with course
work and are carrying out their research. Copies of the questionnaire
were administered to 144 master's students and 140 questionnaires were
retrieved. The questionnaire was divided into six (6) sections A – F.
Section A, covers the bio-data information of respondents, Section B is
the students awareness of open access journals, section C is the
attitude of students towards the use of open access journals, section D
is the student usage of open access journals, section E is the benefits
of using open access journals while section F is the problems of using
open access journals.

Research Questions

The study sought answers to the following questions:

What is the level of awareness of open access
journals
by master's degree students?

What is the level of usage of open access journals by
master's degree students?

What are the benefits derived from using open access
journals by masters' degree students?

What are the problems militating against the use of
open access journals by masters degree students?

Findings and Discussion

Findings for this study are presented in Table 1-7

No

%

MLS 1

64

46

MLS 11

76

54

Total

140

100

Table1: Analysis of Respondents Bio-Data (student's
category)

From table 1 above, one could observe that majority of
the respondents were made up of MLS 11 students which comprises of 76
(54%) of the respondents while 64 (46%) were in MLS1.

MLS1

MLS 11

Sub-Total

Male

No

%

No

%

No

%

33

66

17

34

50

100

Female

50

56

40

44

90

100

Total

83

_

57

_

140

_

Table 2: Student's Gender

Table 2 shows that 33(66%) and 17 (34%) of the
respondents were males, respectively of MLS1 and MLS 11. That is to say
50 respondents out of the 140 were male. Also, 50 (56%) and 40 (44%) of
the respondents were females respectively of MLS1 & MLS11. The
table (4.2) therefore reveals that majority of the respondents for the
study were females.

Table 3: Analysis table showing awareness of respondents
to OAJ

Respondents

Frequency

Percentage

MLS I

64

46

MLS II

76

54

Total

140

100

From table 3 above, 64 (46%) representing MLS I
respondents agreed that they are aware of OAJ, also, 76 (54%)
representing MLS II of respondents agreed that they are aware of OAJ.

Table 4 above shows that majority of the respondents
were not aware of library philosophy and practice as an open access
journal, such that 60(43%) and 25(18%) that makes up to 85(61%)
respondents out of the 140 that were not aware of its existence as open
access open access journals. Also, it revealed that 71(51%) and 29(21%)
of the respondents were not aware that libri is equally an open access
journal.

Table 6 shows the level of usage of open access journals
by master's degree students. Thus, having access to open access
journals came first with 86(61%) and 28(20%) responses. This is
slightly followed by downloading of articles from open access journals
with 83(59%) and 83(27%) responses as well as students' likeness to
publish articles in open access journals with 81(58%) and 42(30%)
responses. In like manner, almost all the items listed on the table
received positive responses which might also be due to open access
journals free cost.

It provides free online access to the literature
necessary for my research

84

60

38

27

12

9

6

4

140

100

2.

It increase impact of researchers work

78

56

46

33

14

10

2

1

140

100

3.

It makes for easy accessibility of the research
work

80

57

47

34

10

7

3

2

140

100

4.

Self archiving is possible

82

59

38

27

12

9

8

6

140

100

5.

It helps in career development

68

49

56

40

6

4

10

7

140

100

6.

Publications are made free for author

76

54

50

36

12

9

2

1

140

100

7.

It reduces publication delay

70

50

36

26

22

16

12

9

140

100

8.

It provides increased citation to published
scholarly work

73

52

40

29

18

13

9

6

140

100

Table 6 shows the benefits derived from using open
access journals by master's degree students. The table revealed that:
it provides free online access to the literature necessary for research
with 84(60%) and 38(27%) positive responses. This is followed by the
possibility of self-Archiving with 82(59%) and 38(27%) and easy
accessibility of research works with 80(57%) and 47(34%) positive
responses, similarly all the items listed on the table as benefits
derivable from the use of OAJs received high positive response.

Table 7: Analysis table showing the problems militating
against the use of open access journals by masters degree students.

S/N

Problems

SA

A

D

SD

Total

No

%

No

%

No

%

No

%

No

%

1.

Retrieval of too much irrelevant information

80

57

33

24

21

15

6

4

140

100

2.

Unavailability of internet facilities

73

52

40

29

17

12

10

7

140

100

3.

Download delay

67

48

54

39

15

11

4

3

140

100

4.

Limited access to computers terminate

78

56

42

30

4

3

16

11

140

100

5.

Lack of knowledge of the existence of OAJ

85

61

38

27

10

7

7

5

140

100

6.

Power outage

76

54

46

33

12

9

6

4

140

100

7.

Improper archiving of some open access journals

64

46

59

42

6

4

11

8

140

100

8.

Lack of internet search skills

83

59

28

20

12

9

17

12

140

100

Table 7 reveals that the lack of knowledge of the
existence of open access journals on the internet as the greatest
problem of master's degree students with 85(61%) and 38 (27%) positive
responses as against 10(7%) and 7(5%) negative responses on the table.
This is narrowly followed by lack of internet search skills with
83(59%) and 28(20%) positive responses as against 12 (9%) and 17(12%)
negative response, while retrieval of too much irrelevant information
comes next on the list with 80(57%) and 33(24%) positive responses as
against 21(15%) and 6 (4%) negative responses. However, other listed
problems on the table also received similar responses as indication of
wide range of problems faced by master's degree students in their use
of open access journals.

Conclusion

The study disclosed that student's use of open access
journals is still far from expected. In other words, one would expect
that student's citation of open access journals should dominate their
research work particularly in this part of the world with great
economic problems, but the situation is quite different. However, one
thing that is clear is that students shows great willingness to use
free sources of information as in the case of open access journals but
have not been adequately informed of their existence in considerable
number. Hence majority of the students were not aware of the existence
of Library philosophy & practice, Libri and several others as
being open access journals. This situation may have been due to the
inadequacy and ineffectiveness of workshop/conferences and internet
usage in this part of the world.

Recommendations

The study, having revealed the enumerated findings
pertaining to master's degree student's awareness, attitude and use of
open access journals above, the following recommendations were
therefore made:

Postgraduate schools authorities with strong
collaboration of head of Departments such as the one under study, the
library and other stakeholders should intensify efforts in the creation
of awareness of existing research/study aids under which open access
journals falls. Such efforts would bring about the practical
implementation of an aspect of library functions that talked about
awareness creation through workshops/conferences.

Lecturers and instructors in the Department of Library
and Information Science should do more in keeping their postgraduate
students abreast of existing/available information resources and not to
leave them to cruel fate of being matured people. Instructors of
information and communication technologies (ICT) should sit up by
ensuring that students have effective and efficient skills in the use
of their gadget and facilities such as internet search engines.

Students should equally be exposed to the disadvantage
and not only the advantage of the use of open access journals
particularly on the quality of contents by stakeholders.

Students should be careful in their likeness to
publish articles in open access journals, Many database come up every
minute on the internet with some of them having questionable authority,
to be wary of this, students should know very well where they are
sending their papers for publication, so that their future professional
career would not be questionable by the committee of professionals in
their fields of study.

Stakeholders should rise up to their responsibilities
by adequately intimating students on the numerous existing open access
journals available to enhance their studies.

Oren, G. (2008). The crisis in scholarly publishing: Open access to the rescue. Journal of Neuropathology 28 (1), 1-4

Okoye, M., & Ejikeme, A. (2010). Open access, institutional
repositories and scholarly publishing: The role of librarians in South
East Nigeria. Journal of Nigeria Library Association: 48th National Conferences.